


maybe in another world

by balconys



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Canon Divergent, Drabble Collection, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind AU, Fight Club AU, HS AU, Harry Potter AU, M/M, Merkids AU, bunch-o-au, in time AU, over the garden wall au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4204239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/balconys/pseuds/balconys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or: eight other ways they could have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe in another world

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: cw for blood mention, depictions of injuries and violence, implied character death and Killua's abuse. also, pre-existing knowledge of each au isn't reaaaally required to read this; it's pretty easy to infer what's happening from context but i'm sorry abt any possible confusion, i just - what is self-control can i e at it

 

01 – **l** **ove, hunt me down, i can't stand to be so dead behind the eyes** // otgw au

“Come with me,” Gon says. The words are too flimsy; they scrabble for footholds in the harsh tumble of winter’s breath. Gon clutches the trembling plane of Killua’s shoulders, tries to latch onto his friend’s gaze before it floats off and forgets itself in the cold, tries to keep his own glowing steady, blister-bright. “We could make it,” he says, urgent, tugging Killua to his feet, away from the quaint house hedged with shadows and windows that don’t know light, never will, says, “if we leave now, we could still—“

“I _can’t_ ,” Killua rasps, and his face is a terrible thing. He pulls back, feet falling silent in the snow. There’s so much of it now, his skin scrubbed raw with its bite, claiming the fingers Gon had held just seconds ago between its teeth. “I don’t _know_ what’s going to happen when – I just, what if, what if I do something, Gon? I’d never forgive myself if—“

“You’re not going to hurt me,” Gon tells him, tries to muster up a smile but he can feel Killua wavering again, feel him withering, a ghost-thin sliver of a boy, too faint for hands.

“It would be wise of you to leave,” Illumi says, billowing out slowly, soundlessly, from Killua’s own shadow, the creeping tar of the Edelwood trailing his steps, taking shape. Fingers settle on his shoulder, and Killua stops breathing, stops hoping. “Besides, Killua haven’t you already eaten today? Devouring him now would be such a waste of a perfectly good meal, don’t you think? Come home, and better for him to return another day, when—”

“Shut up!” Gon shouts, his face crumpling violently. “Killua isn’t your tool, he’s my friend! Stop telling him what to do!”

“My, my,” Illumi says, vaguely amused. “You know I’m only doing this because I love—“

“Just shut up!” It’s Killua’s voice that comes ripping through the stasis, through the breath held in his throat like a stopper. He turns to him, and his eyes are ice, the solstice itself; throat unclenching, he says, in a quivering vapor trail of a voice: “Please, just... just let me go _.._.”

Illumi’s gaze slides coolly over his. “Father has been too lenient with you, letting you run around with that boy. You’ve grown forgetful,” his hand disappears in the pocket of his coat, and Gon’s hand flies to seize Killua’s hand, Killua’s hand turning to stone, says, let’s go, Killua, please, we have to go _now_ — “monsters don’t have friends.”

_“Killua—”_

“Forget the boy and come back home with me,” Illumi says, as a cold light bursts from the boy-shaped bell in his hand, Killua’s eyes filling with stars, clouding his parted mouth with ancient light, “for the ringing of the bell commands you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

02 – **i wanna share your mouthful, i wanna do all the things your lungs do so well** // hs au

“Hey, haa, hey, Killua,” Gon’s saying, keeping pace with the array of neon arrows dancing up the screen with an onslaught of moves that’s nothing short of excessive, puncturing the last step of her combo by pirouetting clumsily in place. _Perfect!_ the screen announces in a shock of pink sparkles, Gon’s skirt whirling just enough to flash the skin above her knees. “Mito-san’s making curry tonight! Wanna, haa, wanna come over?”

Beside her, Killua catches a glimpse of it, swallows, lands with a cat’s easy grace on her two bare feet at the last beat. “Yeah, haa, w-why not?” she pants, face turned away to hide the growing heat there.

They’d peeled off their socks, stuffed them into their school shoes by the metal pad. It’s only Thursday, barely even six in the afternoon; they’d both run out of tokens by their eighth song so the crowd they usually would have drawn is all but non-existent today, save for some bored college kids and the janitor making endless rounds through the arcade hall.

And that’s the thing, see – it’s only Thursday, only three days after The Dream, the prophesied end of days, and Killua isn’t sure what that makes her – some lone horny high schooler wandering the barren wasteland god abandoned for a better crowd, maybe, except every time Gon grins at her she feels the full weight of her painful existence crashing into her like an over-speeding fire truck, and it doesn’t matter how much Killua prays, wills the days to cross over so she can finally forget, move on with her life because oh my god, Gon has never really had any sense for these things, a creature of pure instinct and zero tact, and wow I didn’t know Gon had freckles _there_ too _,_ that’s nice I mean not nice, that’s not normal is it best friends aren’t supposed to delve into that line of thought and holy fuck how is it only _Thursday_ —

“Killua?”

She blinks, steps back. Gon’s pulling up her socks, up over her sun-browned ankles, looking at her with a face fixed with concern.

“You good?”

“Yeah, just.” Killua swallows thickly. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, Gon, I’m sure, okay?”

Gon rises to her feet, smooths down her skirt. A small wicked grin wrinkles the edge of her mouth as she slaps Killua’s arm and takes off, calls out behind her, “well then, race ya!” as Killua trips on her own socks, chasing her giggling back with a ready mouthful of obscenities.

-

“Heh, I – I can’t believe I finally beat you,” Gon says.

“You had a head start, ‘course you would, haa, you cheater,” Killua shoots back.

“Still.” She sticks out her tongue. They’re on their backs now, collapsed on the grass by Mito’s immaculate front porch to gather their breaths, their bikes in a slanted heap on the pavement. The sun hangs low above them, a cracked yolk, skims the greyscale roofs of their quiet town. Killua scrubs the sweat from her brow, turns to face Gon; she’s splayed out on the ground like a storm blew through her, hair in chaos despite the ponytail, her skirt rumpled obscenely past her thighs in complete Gon fashion. Killua squawks at this, finds it in herself to salvage what little decency Gon has left by reaching out and tugging her skirt down.

“Ugh! No one wants to see your stupid Minnie Mouse underwear,” she huffs. For a dangerous second her knuckle brushes the cool skin of Gon’s knee, and she tears her hand back, a little too quickly, lays it safely over her own lap _. Can’t burn too fast._

Gon considers this, then proceeds to lift her own skirt to peek between her thighs. “I think it’s really cute though?”

Appalled, Killua slaps Gon’s hands down. “Don’t do that!”

“Ehhh, what about you? I wanna know what kind of underwear Killua wears,” she whines, hands branching out, as Killua splutters about. “I bet they’re really cute!”

“What – no you can’t, you – get _off!”_

Gon pulls back, a harsh sigh rustling out through her nose that’s all sorts of dejected. “But we’re best friends!”

Killua reaches out to pinch her cheek, growls, “Are you in grade school or something? Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean we can just show each other the color of our underwear, okay? Especially out here! God, honestly? Sometimes you’re such a creep.”

And then they’re quiet again, the wind soft and sloping down the hill. Gon huffs through the stillness, but relents, plops back heavily and doesn’t speak, and for once Killua finds a moment to untangle her thoughts in silence.

It doesn’t last long.

“Hey, Killua.” Gon turns, and there’s a glazed, faraway look to her. “Have you ever thought about kissing?”

The Dream comes to her in fragments, white-hot and sharp around the edges. Remembers: breath like fog like an oven-door exhale. A softness, pressing against her chest, like the press of ten feet of water above you when it’s trying to drown a body, and heat – curling her toes, stretching out every sinew she didn’t know she had.

Just kissing, Gon wants to know. Killua wants to laugh, almost.

“No,” Killua scoffs, dusting the grass stains from her elbows. “That’s – why would I?”

“Ah,” Gon says. Turns her face back towards the sky. “Just curious.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

03 – **i’m a hold-my-cards-close, i’m a wreck-what-i-love-most** // eternal sunshine of the spotless mind au

“—looked so _offended_ ,” Gon’s saying, his mouth somewhere above Killua’s hairline. He laughs, and it travels down the dip of his throat, thrums pleasantly against Killua’s own belly. Last day before Christmas break and they’d weaved themselves into heap of tangled limbs over Gon’s bed to fight off the late November draft, the duvet tossed carelessly over their shoulders like a mere afterthought. It slips off now, slips as Gon does, dragging in a cold gasp of air into their makeshift shelter as he falls back to his side, his cheek sinking into the mattress. “And then he just – walked out. Just like that. It was so embarrassing, you should’ve seen it, Killua. Kurapika was so _so_ red, like a tomato...”

A smile softens Killua’s face, his eyelids already dancing with sleep. The ceiling swims between slow blinks, his toes like icicles in his socks, so he turns, jams his feet between Gon’s miraculous legs – _ahhh, like a fucking furnace, incredible_ – as Gon whines in protest, stuffs his own cold fingers up Killua’s shirt and laughs gleefully at the painful grimace that twists his face.

“Shouldn’t you be going? I mean, not that I’m complaining,” Gon says, propped on his elbow, “but don’t you have some packing to do?”

Killua makes a sound like a cat-whine low in his throat. “Don’t wanna,” he huffs into his pillow, curling legs into himself like a comma.

“You big baby.” Gon’s laugh breaks against his nose. Carelessly, he throws a leg over Killua’s hip, pulling the duvet loosely over their heads until they’re eclipsed by the dark. “It’s getting really late though,” he reminds him, “and I need to get up early this time if I want to catch my train tomorrow else Mito-san will get _really_ mad at me...” but Killua’s too lost in the lulling warmth of their twin bodies, so soft and still and quiet.

Too quiet, Gon finds, all of a sudden; he pulls closer, tries to find purchase in his skin. “Killua?”

“Not yet,” Killua says, finally, fingers dragging the cloth of Gon’s shirt under his nails. “Just. Let me stay for - a while. Please.”

Gon searches for him in the dark. Their breaths collect in the minute space between them, condensing as dew. “Okay,” he relents, instead, loosening against him. “Okay.”

 

(Tomorrow:

“I can’t,” Killua says, the words like teeth torn out of him, “I can’t do it.”

He’s on his knees, shaking too much, far too much. On the floor: a carcass of glass and porcelain, painted yellow, bright robin’s-egg blue. A picture, buried beneath the wreck. Behind him the machine shrieks from his absence, the gleam of its metal tray bright and taunting.

“You can,” Illumi says, looming over him. To his left Milluki rolls his eyes behind the monitor and sticks his thick arm through the bin bag full of memoirs. “Because it’s for Alluka.”

Alluka. His chest caves into his stomach from the memory of it: a sunlit smile, shadowed by four walls. In the basement. After this – no more walls, no more shadows.

“He’ll – he’ll look for me.” His desperation is a wild thing, flowering through him from neglect. “He’ll do something, he’ll find out—“

A twisted smile turns the edges of Illumi’s mouth. “He won’t. You know why?” He bends to face him, caresses the trembling curve of his cheek. “Because—“

Lies, lies, lies. Killua doesn’t want to hear it. He flinches from Illumi's touch, dusts the glass from the picture, scrapes the shards into himself, into a pile. It’s the last of it, the last of Gon he’ll ever have, his house empty and faded from what he’d taken from himself, what he’s taking now, the hollow blank of Illumi’s eyes a mirror of his own, except for the creeping smile and the mouthful of cold, cutting letters, _blessed are the forgetful, little brother—_ )  
  
  


{Tomorrow: an ending.

“You erased me,” Gon says, hurt, under the duvet.

“Yeah, my parents don’t like you very much,” Killua says. “And you aren’t erased just yet, okay? Now _shh_.”

Search lights are hovering above them, inching over the blankets; after a fruitless inspection, they glide away, disappear into the hallway.

“Um, what are we doing?”

“Trying to hide you, obviously. Hey, shut up for a sec?”

A pause. “They’re gone now, I think.”

“Not yet. Listen.”

Gon strains in the dark. A deep tremor shudders up the walls, from the ground below, the floorboards groaning like age-old bones. And then, another, and another.

“Shit,” Killua says, tearing off the duvet from their heads and padding hurriedly to the window.

“What’s happening?” Gon asks. Peers past Killua’s shoulder in time to see a whole row of cookie-cutter houses folding into itself, like a pop-up book sliding finally shut, each lamppost marking its existence blinking out one after the other, culminating on its last, tired breath.

“They’re erasing town,” Killua says, the panic welling up in him. “We need to – we need to leave. We need to get out of this house, _now_.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know! Anywhere but here!” He tears his eyes away from the view, from the park in the distance now vanishing into a big blank spot, the park where Gon first kissed him, clumsy and shy and his lips were warm, so warm, swivels to turn frantic eyes _away_. “A place where they can’t get a hold of us. Some place safe. Some place – some place you don’t belong in, where they can’t detect you. That’s the only way I can keep you hidden.”

He stops, realizes he’s been pacing, and lets himself drop on the edge of the bed. “Oh, alright,” Gon replies, a picture of perfect calm, and takes up the space beside him. “So, any place you got in mind?

Killua drags a palm tiredly over his face. “That’s the thing,” he says, “I can’t. I can’t remember anything without you in it.”

Gon makes an endeared noise. “Aw, Killuaaa,” he singsongs, bumping their shoulders playfully. “But c’mon, try anyway!”

“Ugh, man.” Killua slaps both of his cheeks, hard, and sighs. “It’s just, I’ve known you for so long. Practically my whole life.”

“There must be _something_.”

“Yeah, ugh, I know.”

“Like a memory you thought you forgot, but was still there, only it was really hidden, like, deep, deep, down,” he says, nodding thoughtfully to himself.

Killua falls back with a muffled thud against the rumpled blanket on the bed, the cracked ceiling a familiar greeting once again before it’s blocked behind his eyes. All around them the house wails its prophecy, building like birth pangs.

“Like,” Gon trails, “a place from your childhood, or, hm...”

For a moment, Killua drifts. Gon’s voice gathers like fog by the other side of the window. He drifts, and drifts, and, piece by piece, remembers: red mittens. A pair of footprints in the snow, snow so blinding he had to squint. And, through the haze: a frozen lake, like a dream, waiting.

“Killua,” he hears Gon call, something edged into his voice.

His eyes snap open. The draft’s nothing if not a frigid blast now, keening incessantly through the slot in the window. Before he can even form the words Gon’s already jumping to it, heaving it open, the glass panel sliding up as a starburst of white fills every orifice in the room, crawling across the floor, seeping into his clothes.

“Killua, Killua,” Gon’s saying, voice filed pencil-thin with excitement, marveling at the snow that’s piling at his boots Killua’s sure had been bare feet only moments ago, the snow now piling in heaps from the open window, falling in flakes from the ceiling itself, into their hair.

Killua tilts his face skyward, sees the room’s decaying paint job fading into a brilliant winter sky, wide and unfettered.

Beyond the window, among the pines, there’s a frozen lake.

Killua swallows.

“I found it,” he murmurs. Takes Gon by the hand, and _runs_.}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

04 – **my kind’s your kind, i’ll stay the same** // hp au

Killua had been acting strangely, ever since the boggart. Gon remembers the moment distinctly, clear as the sky on a cloudless day. Saw how it crippled the entirety of his face into something petrified, prey-like; how he’d fled the class then, out of his grasp, Kite rooting him in place with a firm grip on his shoulder before he went stumbling out after him. He hasn’t stopped looking, a week later, but Killua is good with shadows. Gon loses him in hallways, over the throng of people during dinners, in the obligatory silences of their classes; he might as well have been chasing a ghost.

Gon knows what this is, though, knows what it means. Killua had explained it to him once, in the covert dungeons they’d found when they were still freshmen, fearful and apart for the very first time from the houses that divided them, when the truth loosened easily from where it was coiled under somewhere too dark and too claustrophobic. Told him how he felt fear differently, felt it like nails scraping through the inner lining of his stomach, felt it like water flooding his mouth, but from the inside. How doubt was like lead like a heavy stone bearing him down trench-long depths, and how the instinct was planted in him, nurtured, by a smothering kind of love.

It was senseless, trying to measure the whole spectrum of how Killua _felt_ , but Gon tried anyway, and he failed, sometimes, and that was okay. That wasn’t the point to their friendship. But there were times the knowledge grew too transient, metamorphose into something inscrutable and again, Gon would have to ask: _how does it hurt, Killua? Tell me how it hurts._

It had been alright, as long as Gon kept asking. But the responses had been sparse and clipped until they weathered into a wall of silence, stopped coming altogether, and Gon has never really been good at working without material.

It’s a couple of indolent snail’s-pace days, a couple more of further silence before Leorio comes up to him with news that all but drains the breath from him. “Got hit by a goddang spell by some Durmstrang kids,” he says breathlessly, in the hall after Transfiguration with Biscuit. “Some sort of spell that overrides the clotting mechanism. It’s pretty bad. If that first-year didn’t see him bleeding buckets all over the bathroom floor – well, I don’t wanna know how that would’ve played out.”

–of course, that was after Killua broke the asshole’s nose. A part of Gon wishes he’d broken more than just the guy’s nose, to be completely honest; another part wonders when the hell Killua started fights with strangers, let alone Durmstrang students. That was more of Gon’s style. Killua enjoyed a good duel as much as the next person, but there was a wicked streak in him that lent him to pranks instead, scoring wins through loopholes and sheer wit.

But Killua's boggart haunts him too, sometimes. This, at least, is indisputable. Gon feels the gaze like cold needles drawing patterns down his spine, as he so much as walks past the corridors that led to the Hufflepuff Commons to chance upon his friend, and though Gon can be scatterbrained at times he isn’t stupid. He knows what danger looks when it’s spelled in the glimmer of Killua’s eyes, knows what it means when he’s got Killua smiling gorgeously around the eyes with his hand folded against his and Illumi’s sudden intrusive presence has Killua ripping his hand back, leaving Gon’s cold, the budding warmth there swirling down into the sinkhole opening beneath their feet. It’d take days before Killua would return to him then, and weeks before they didn’t have to hide twined hands under tables anymore.

Killua’s still in comatose-like sleep in the hospital wing when Zushi shoulders Gon in mid-Quidditch practice, cradling his own numb fingers in his hand. His wrist throbs like another heart, jagged bone lodged like a splinter in his skin.

(“You’re fucking unbelievable,” Killua would say, later when he woke, face all bunched up and thankfully not so bloodless in the candlelight anymore. The matron would be kind, letting him stay a while even after his wrist problem was remedied. _It's not that bad_ , Gon would argue; the fall from the broom had been intended, sure, but there’d been a certainty to it that he embraced. Killua would snort, say, _that doesn’t make any sense_ , and that would be okay, too. If this was the only they could talk, whispering amidst the hush of the clinic beside other sleeping bodies, then that would be good enough.)

There are candies stuffed in his bag, all the kinds Killua likes, and a promise folded over his tongue, ready for when he wakes. Gon knows it’s not enough. He knows it’s out of his hands, knows this is something Killua would have to fix himself, but he’s laid out all the parts of himself for Killua to see, to use. _Here_ , every part of him means to say, _l_ _et me laugh at your boggarts, til you learn to do it by yourself._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

05 – **pump your veins with gushing gold** // in time au

Silva’s lounged like a beast, languid against plush pillows like something mythical, his mane a startling white-shock cascade down his waist, over his robes. His eyes are a searing blizzard of a gaze, wide and watching, and not quite human.

It’s the same look in Killua’s eyes, the same tempered steel. Silva’s proud, in a way. “My son, my prodigal son,” he says, arms unfurling in welcome. He smiles down the barrel Killua has pointed at his face, just below his nose, where it could kill, and the room dips under a several leagues of tension.

Killua says nothing. The air pulls itself taut, a quivering tightrope Silva fearlessly treads. “You’ve returned to us," he says.

“This isn’t some dumb reunion,” Killua replies evenly, without even a ripple of emotion to betray him. His aim inches up his father’s nose, rests between his eyes.

From the corner of Silva’s periphery, Gotoh and Amane reach for their batons. He waves them back to stillness with a smooth turn of the wrist as Killua’s eyes track the motion.

“I need more time,” Killua says eventually, growing restless. His eyes flicker incessantly throughout the room, in search for a shadow. “It’s... it’s for a friend. G– my friend’s running out.”

Silva’s gaze never wavers. “Surely you have enough for a hundred lifetimes?”

“It’s not enough.” It comes out rushed, pushed through the gaps of his clenched teeth. “I gave it away, I need – _more_.”

Silva lets his smile flag. He’d noticed it the moment Killua stepped into the ballroom, the way he’d moved too quickly, talked like the very air was running out. It looks like the slums had rewired him to walk like the dying, riotous rest of them, always scrambling for time. His eyes drop to his son’s arm clock, half of its red gleaming digits obscured by the bloodstained sleeve of his suit.

“I’m not leaving empty-handed,” Killua says. The seconds digit of his clock steadily chips away, 20, 19, 18, 17—

“Alright,” Silva acquiesces, and gracefully motions for Canary.

The adamantine mask on Killua’s face clatters to the floor; unbelief turns him wide-eyed and hesitant. Canary bows before him, pushes up her sleeve, past her elbow. There’s an impasse of motion where Killua simply stares of her offered hand, before it’s quickly replaced by calculated apathy. He tucks his gun, and their hands grasp each other, turn like a lock into a key; Killua’s seconds fill up, 10, 11, 14, 29, 40, a rapid gush that bleeds over into minutes, hours, days—

“Enough,” Killua manages, trying to pull away. “Too much, I don’t need so much—“

“Does it really matter?” Silva says, bored. “Time is commodity is time. Consider it a gift of my courtesy. Don’t waste it.” A smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Perhaps you'd like to get yourself something nice? You’d do well to replace that sham of a suit.”

Killua breaks away, staggers back, Canary dragging her sleeve back down before Killua can even take a look. Silva watches him snap his gun back into place, back between his impassive eyes, watches him as he backs away, again too quickly, just as fast as he came.

“Don’t you want to see Alluka?” Silva says, just before he disappears, and Killua – freezes.

“I’ll come back,” he says. The words are clumsy as they fall into the air.

Silva’s grin is wide and manic and expansive. “I know you will.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

06 – **i could take away the salt from your eyes, the spitting salt in you** // merkids au

“Ready!” Gon says.

From the tub, Killua’s face spreads in morbid fascination as the string goes taut between the three foot-space between Gon and the door, the door now slamming resoundingly shut as a tooth comes flying out of his mouth. A wince ripples through the unnerving smile Gon has plastered on his face as he scrapes it up from the floor as if it were a shiny nickel gleaming in the sun, placing it reverently on his palm.

“I got it out, Killua, look!” He props up a knee on the edge of the tub to show it to him; it’s pearly white, small and flecked with dried blood, the same color as the spot on Gon’s lower lip. Killua’s tail swishes curiously in the water as he curls close, a flicker of gradient silver that fans out into a pale blue.

“Cool,” he says, unblinking. He’d never needed to blink, back at home. Never needed to pull out teeth either – his kind of fell out in rows, so this, and everything else since Gon found him lurking by the boats a fortnight ago, is relatively a pretty cool learning experience.

“Gon?” comes Mito's voice, from downstairs _._ They share panicked looks.

“I probably should go,” Gon says sheepishly, tucking his tooth into the pocket of his shorts. “She’ll start to wonder what I’m up to.”

Killua pouts, but nods, sliding back shallowly as Gon totters away and returns with a fresh ladle of water from the faucet. They spend a few more seconds hatching chaos there, laughing and splashing water everywhere before Gon pulls away, the front of his shirt soaked through and through.

“We’ll play again tomorrow, right?” Killua asks.

“Yeah, of course! See you when the sun’s up, okay? Good night, Killua.” He smiles as he turns, his lower front teeth faintly stained. “You'll be fine here, right?"

"I guess. I mean, where else do you suggest I stay?"

Gon's lips quirk into a grin. "Should I leave the light on?”

Killua shakes his head. He was used to the dark, where he came from. “No, it’s fine. Night, Gon.”

-

Gon wakes in a muddled tangle on his bed, the morning slanting pleasantly through the bamboo blinds. As always, the day is bright and good for fishing, so he slips on his slippers and hurries to the bathroom.

He knows something’s wrong, can sense the prickle of it, as he shadows the door, his hand poised for turning the knob. The quiet is the unsettling kind, too dense and cloaking the steps that led to the room. He cracks the door open.

His voice comes out all wobbly: “Killua?”

It’s the water – or, to be exact, the lack of it; flaked off scales litter the top of the last thin sheet of tub water like fallen leaves, rapidly losing its glimmer. Killua looks almost asleep, curled there in the tub, but it’s a tired kind of weariness that clings to his face, and he looks pale, too pale, paler than his hair, almost as blue as his magical tail.

It takes a while to snap himself out of his momentary stupor. He bends down, scoops Killua up into his arms, his right hand cupping his neck, the other a brace on the place where his back meets his tail. Killua’s light, like a balloon, like his body's full of air instead of bones. He doesn’t have time to dwell on it, so he darts out the room, past where Mito sleeps still in her room, down the stairs, and out into the daylight.

The wheelbarrow’s in the sun, by the flowerbed where Mito always leaves it. Gon finds it easily and folds Killua into it gently, his tail hanging off of the side like a flower’s drooping stem. He pushes behind the handles with all his strength, against his feet and into his small clenched hands, pushes until he sees the ocean rising to meet him. Seeing it uncorks the panic fizzing in his chest, and he lets the wheelbarrow sink to the sand to grab Killua, who’s grown even more weightless during the ride.

The sand crumbles easily beneath his feet. The water feels cool and frothy as it rolls carelessly into his toes, then his ankles, his knees. Gon takes a breath, and lowers Killua in.

There’s a frightful moment where Killua simply floats to the bottom, turning as he goes. Gon waits, panting harshly over the crashing surf.

And waits.

And _waits_.

And then, the miracle: Killua’s head breaches the surfaces in a halo of glittering water.

“Killua!” Gon nearly cries. His eyes prickle with tears he doesn’t bother swiping away.

Killua’s sighing in the water, letting his head loll in languid circles and breathes like it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted, eyes closing blissfully. “That was horrible,” he says. “I thought I’d died.”

“Don’t say that!” Gon cries, shoving at him. “I was so scared!”

“It was your fake human water,” he explains, groaning, bobbing in the waves and glaring at him through one alien eye. “Guess I can only last so long in it. While you were sleeping it started getting hard to breathe, it hurt like a _fucker_. But, whatever – hey, you saved my life.”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna let you die,” Gon huffs angrily, too caught up to scold him for the dirty mouth he’d probably picked up from the sailors he used to trail, back when he looked at people and saw prey.

Killua shakes his head. “Yeah, thanks, I know that, but I mean – you saved my life.” He looks at him meaningfully

What he gets is a face blank and clueless as a rock. Killua sighs. “Which means,” he continues, rolling his eyes. “I have to grant you a wish.”

“A wish?”

“Save any of us merfolk gets you a free wish, yeah,” he says, lets his tail flick out of the water shimmering with renewed vigor. “We’re benevolent like that - no refunds though. Haven’t you heard any of the stories? You’re even more clueless than I thought. Guess it’s ‘cause you live on an island and all.”

“Hey!” Gon sticks out his tongue. “But – wait, wait. So I get to have a wish? Like, anything I want? Anything at all?”

“Yup.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s the deal.”

“Wow."

“Yep.”

“You can do that?”

Killua’s expression bristles. “ _Yes_ , Gon! Now what do you want?”

Gon lets himself quiet. What _did_ he want? There’s nothing that readily comes to mind, nothing that he particularly wants. He’s a happy boy, feels like one at least, even more so since Killua had come along. Killua was a miracle of summer, born of the ocean spray itself; he’s the best thing that had ever happened to Gon, even if he himself didn’t like to talk about how he got here in the first place, about his home and his parents and his sister that he only ever spoke about in murmurs, around a half-smile, always ending with a period and quick deflection of subject. Killua clings to him like he doesn’t want to come back at all, endlessly fascinated with legs and feet and the tiny nubs that sprouted at the ends, that allowed Gon to jump, fit his toes into the small gaps in the bark of trees and disappear high up in the leaves.

Killua’s floating on his back now, his tail swishing back and forth, slipping cleanly into the water. The thought forms slowly in him, rising as the sea. “Hey, Killua,” he says, because climbing trees had never been much fun until he had Killua to pluck fruit for, and maybe he _is_ a little clueless and a little lonely in his little island, just a smidge, “would you like to stay? Stay here, I mean. With me. With Mito-san. We wouldn’t have to hide anymore and, and you wouldn’t have to stay in the tub too and, you don’t – I mean, if that’s what you want, that is, aha...”

Killua’s staring at him like he’d just kissed him. Gon knows he knows what it means. Killua's eyes are flickering from him to his own tail like he'd never considered its existence before, and it feels a bit like free solo climbing to be honest, as a nervous smile wobbles its way into his face, eventually finding its footing; it mirrors Killua’s own, small but sure, warm and telling. It means: you don’t have to wander anymore.

“Are you even asking me that,” Killua chokes out, wondrously. “Are you seriously even asking me that.”

Gon laughs, “just making sure,” and takes a long drawn-out breath, takes one last glance at Killua's fabled tail, says: “I wish—“

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

07 – **we kiss on the mouth but still cough down our sleeves //** fight club au

It’s the smell he notices first, makes his nostrils flare, sharp and acrid and metallic. Then, the heat: a thick musk that comes to him like the fog of his own breath, each exhale heavy and choked with dread; it’s what wallpapers the staircase as he descends into the basement dimly lit with commercial fluorescents, steps into an ocean of sound that rushes up to him, feet first, pulls him stumbling in with clammy fingers into its depths.

It’s too easy to find Gon. Killua sees him over the mangled swarm of bodies and spitting voices that crash against each other like waves, sees him and forgets how to breathe, his throat clenching like fists, so he waits by the fringe, slips his hands neatly into his pockets.

Gon’s poised at the center of it all, pulling out of his last striking stance, shoulders hunching into his core with each laborious breath. The lights map out the all the startling raw bruises on him, over his ribs, striped trails up his neck like lover’s kisses. There’s a fresh flowering bloom over his left eye that’s swollen shut, and his left shoulder looks broken, the way he keeps the arm curled into himself. A man’s down by his feet. He lets out a fractured groan, hands pawing at his face, where the break is, and Killua’s tongue shrinks into his throat, at loss of it all, of what Gon’s done.

Gon’s eyes lift and his eyes are welling wild, scanning the crowd. “Another,” he says, voice cracked from disuse, and the crowd seethes once again, enraptured, shoving and jeering and egging at each other to go up against this unsettling, defiant boy. _Another!_ they cry, as the fallen man is pulled to the side, _did you hear him? He said another! Bastard still wants to fight!_

Someone parts the crowd; he’s a towering shadow breaching the fringes of the mob, heavily built, with skin so dark it’s almost red, his nose a sharp dangerous slope. Gon’s gaze turns to him, and his arms-feet-face, shift, motions smooth. His stance is – different now, and Killua realizes with a sinking horror like a drain pulled from his stomach that it’s what Kite taught him, back at the dojo, back when—

He can’t watch this. He pulls his hands from his pockets, pulls himself from the sweat and the noise and the dank breath clogging up everything else, and steps into the circle.

Immediately, Gon’s eyes flicker to him, and shock inches into his face in small increments, his eyes widening into dinner plates.

“Killua,” he says, more breath than anything. The realization comes to him quickly, his brows knitting together. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Killua can’t help it; the indignation rushes through him like a dizzying spell, and he chokes out, “Wh– I’m not – you, what the fucking – Gon, I _looked_ for you,” he forces one foot forward, two, “I’ve been tearing the entire place apart looking for your sorry ass and this is where you’ve been? I can’t believe this, I can’t—“

“You need to leave, “ Gon says, and it cuts at him. The man he’s supposed to fight – Youpi, he remembers it now, the name, the contorted grin from a scattered dream – he grunts something, and whole club’s jeering at him too but it’s lost to him all the same. Realizes, numbly, that Gon isn’t looking at him anymore. “Just go home, Killua. I have to do this.”

He sees his own hand whip out to grab Gon’s arm, the one that isn’t broken beyond use, growls, “Why are you doing this? Tell me why you’re doing this. You need to fucking tell me right now because I don’t understand,” he’s dragging Gon away, pulling him to the side, away from the lights and grinning dog-like faces, says, “didn’t you learn anything after Kite—“

Killua freezes, and ice, cold and numb, blooms from his navel. Gon tears his arm out of his grasp. “Kite hated this place,” Gon says, flat and eyes unseeing. “He hated it, and he wanted to destroy it, but he couldn’t. So, I’m going to do it. In his place. But first, I have to – I need to do this. Don’t you understand, Killua? I have to do this.”

“No,” Killua says. “I don’t.”

The room’s converging around them, their angry chorusing like jagged palisades, and Gon’s next words are drowned before they have a chance to meet his ears but he reads it on his lips, reads it in his crooked smile, loud and savage like the clamor around them: _of course you wouldn’t,_ and Killua wants to tell him that Kite hated this place because he saw what it could do to people, this place that lured people in like a fish to a hook and it would be too late then, you’d be done, wouldn't be able to escape this dirty concrete coop even if you begged for it because it stayed in your skin, in your fractured bones, under your nails – he wants to say it but the words are clogged right under his tongue, too thick for his mouth, so he says, instead:

“Please, let’s just go home.”

And Gon says: “I can’t.”

He would've left after that, any other day, defeated and frustrated and pitching pebbles into car windows, but he’d learned enough not to leave Gon where he could lose himself in a fire as beguiling as this. “Have you seen yourself?” he tries. “You can’t fucking fight, Gon! Your shoulder—“ It comes out choked at the end. “What you’re looking for – they aren’t here. Look, can't you see? They’re not here, and you’re never gonna see them again!”

“Pitou will come,” Gon says evenly, turning back to the bloodied concrete floor. “After I punish Youpi, Pitou will come. So you can go home now.”

 _Punish_. Killua lunges for Gon’s arm again, sends him stumbling against the wall. Another cry rings around them, _fight! fight! fight_! but Killua barely registers it before he’s on him, punching the wall next to his head. “So that’s it? That’s your plan?” He pants. Gon’s eyes are split with anger. “Let me do it then. Stay the fuck _down_. I’ll fucking fight. And then we’ll go home.”

He doesn’t see the twisted expression wiped clean off of Gon's face as he turns, walks to where Youpi stands impatiently, looking like he’s been literally bored to death.

“Killua—“ comes Gon’s urgent cry behind him, a pitch higher above the noise.

“Sorry for the wait,” he says, popping each button of his shirt. “My friend’s too beat to fight. I’m here in his place. That cool?”

Someone near them says, the only one with a shirt that isn't torn or bloodied beyond recognition, “Well, you’re new so you’d have to fight anyway.”

Youpi crumbles through his last bastion of patience. “I don’t give a flying fuck who fights, stop yapping and get on with it,” he yells, loosening his feet. Up close he's even redder.

“Stay out of this—“ Gon’s saying, again, slipping up and over the crazed chanting. Killua ignores it, and kicks off his shoes to the side.

“Go easy on me, yeah?” he says, rolls his shoulders, pops his neck, each sharp knuckle. Settles on a familiar stance Wing taught him, not too long ago, thinks, _man, Wing’s gonna be mad about this_ , using his teachings for something as crude and senseless as this, but oh well. If he can keep Gon alive for one more night, then it’s more than enough.

 

(He wins.

“I’d punch you, but my fingers are kind of broken,” Killua confesses, after the fight, weary and bloodied and each nerve thrumming with adrenaline, and Gon throws himself at him from where he'd been slumped against the wall, broken shoulder and all, hits him with a barrage of _why did you do that Killua you should never have been here you shouldn’t have come I never wanted you to,_ every inch of him trembling and Killua curves around him until the weariness of the past month finally catches up to them both, leaves them a crumpled heap by the wall, shadowed by the crowd and the lights.

“I’m tired,” Gon whispers, too weary for anger or pretence, every trace of whatever kept him on his toes just minutes ago petering out. “I’m so tired, Killua.”

“Me too,” Killua says.

“I don’t...” Gon begins, hollow. “I don’t know what to do...anymore. What should I do?”

A pause. “Let’s go home.”

Gon shudders out a breath, eyes falling shut. A slight nod. “Okay.”)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08 - **precious metals now colliding, look to you my carbon copy** // canon

They’re running from another beast again, skidding past gargantuan roots and tailing mountain rivers veiled in the green. Gon nearly had it too, but the beasts here in the Dark Continent are different - a little less prone to sweet talk and boyish charm, more so after Killua had unintentionally tumbled into its nest.

Gon’s laughter rings like his mouth was made for it, rings like the blood high and singing beneath their skin, like the day he got his nen back. “Run!” he laughs, beside him, scraping through the underbrush, and the sun makes a kaleidoscope out of his eyes.

There’s a waterfall rushing towards them, only twenty steps away. Killua can hear the distant roar falling into turbulent heights below, can hear the beast’s howl scrape against their backs like fingers. Only ten steps now, eight, five, three – without thinking, they reach for each other, simultaneously, hands scrabbling to tether wrists as they turn to each other with twin grins and it feels like - a promise, like his heart leaving his throat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

end.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [otgw au](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDaZJ-iTfcI)//[hs au](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUZBFLPRUUM)//[eternal sunshine of the spotless mind au](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufegdUMASzM)//[hp au](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIIxlgcuQRU)//[in time au](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0IOYcKgfJQ)//[merkids au](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIXHlX-H6B0)//[fight club au](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvqlt7OWTOk)//[canon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td0TCAjYA2w)


End file.
